always too young or too old

From the Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson

April 14, 1842

If I should write an honest diary, what should I say? Alas, that life has halfness, shallowness. I have almost completed thirty-nine years, and I have not yet adjusted my relation to my fellows on the planet, or to my own work. Always too young or too old, I do not justify myself; how can I satisfy others?

This was written exactly one century before my birth.